The best song comes early in “Ghostface Killers”, with an excellent rapped chorus from Offset that’s been running through my head since the tape dropped and Travis Scott sounding excellent as always even if he doesn’t say much anything at all.

Youth Lagoon’s sophomore record stands tall and sure-footed.

Beam along with producer Brian Deck and a host of musicians including members from Dylan’s band, The Tin Hat Trio and Antony and Johnsons, Iron and Wine continues this evolution by crafting a lush album of AM radio pop—complete with funk and jazz grooves.

It’s better than the first or second installments: slightly more ambitious and slightly more layered.

Sucker’s greatest musical weapon is Aitchison’s voice--a posh, melodramatic caterwaul that will encourage either adoration or virulent hatred for all of its full-throated, Union Jack swagger.

Sex and Food is a beautiful introspection and a far better answer to the day’s political malaise and helplessness than my usual response of embarking on an enraged and slutty food binge.

Kacey’s dulcet voice and talent for melody are still worthy of great respect--just about every tune connects.

What the band still manages to do so well is use aural snippets from a range of contrasting but conventional sources, weave them together and still sound like no one else out there.

By challenging their audience in such starkly interpersonal terms, Savages have pulled off an even more impressive trick. On Silence Yourself, they were shouting a rallying cry from the rooftops; on Adore Life, they’re shouting a foot away from your face.

While Milo’s lyrical wit has remained sharp over the years, the beats he raps over have gotten better and better with every release, culminating in Who Told You To Think??!!?!?!?! as the best batch of beats he’s rapped over.

It’s beautiful. The second half of the album, as mentioned earlier, is less interesting.

Even if I miss the personal struggles of I Am a Bird Now and The Crying Light, Anohni and her collaborators have created a dazzling musical artifact. Hopelessness ultimately betrays its title, and its banner-waving, because the voice at its center is fundamentally the opposite of defeated.

My Name Is My Name is as strong a “debut” full length as anyone could hope to produce, and reminds the world why it fell in love with this coke-rap wizard more than ten years ago.

Punk is alive, but it just needs a second to squeeze drops of Visine into its eyes before it can bust out ferocious riffs and sing about nothing, or stick it to the status quo but maintain Austin, Texas levels of weirdness.

Moth is a breezy, immensely enjoyable pop record that provides just the amount of pep that you’ll need to make it through the winter.

Luckily, even without all of the context and lofty exposition, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late is an altogether great and always thrilling listen.

What Grande has honed on thank u, next is the way she cunningly interweaves modern r&b patois and beats that brush up against the boundaries of top 40.

Love is Free makes a seriously compelling case that the EP should be the standard form of pop-music communication. Robyn’s latest is all killer, no filler, and leaves you begging for more.

Consider the context of the odd drum machine and her monotone delivery, giving more emotional weight to her words and that pause, and the contrast provided when the riotous saxophone comes in. Other highlights include the gorgeous harmonies of “I Bet on Losing Dogs” and the Pixies-inspired “Dan the Dancer” and “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars.”

On The Moon Rang Like a Bell, Hundred Waters offers an album of quiet moments of subtlety juxtaposed with crashing waves of desperation.

This is a good record, where two inherently different musicians who speak the same language get together in the same room and produce something that’s as amorphous as the cover and as emotionally charged as the album and track titles suggest.

Only when you dive in does the beauty reveal itself. Grizzly Bear have never been afraid to expect something of the listener. That’s never been truer than on Painted Ruins.

The vocals on You’re Nothing, however, are much more emotive and indicative of a newfound acknowledgement of the singer’s vulnerability as a frontman. The result is anything but sappy.

The band’s strengths are all the same, but they’ve been developed, and their focus seems to have stabilized and sharpened.

Quavo, Takeoff, and Offset breeze through it all with a contagious confidence that makes for a fun and surprisingly accessible album.

This might be their best album, in the sense that it feels more complete and narrative than anything preceding it.

Currents is a consummate grower, in part the musical evolution is overwhelming.

Divers takes another logical step, tightening up from the sprawling consistency of Have One on Me without quite tightening up enough to return to Mender’s folk-pop. This is easily Newsom’s most sumptuously arranged album, with a more eclectic palette of instruments than she’s previously employed.

On Spiritual Songs for Lovers to Sing, Roberts and Hoorn deliver a beautiful album filled with bombastic, gothic and anthemic hymns that aim for deliverance.

Her instincts as a songwriter--one of the best of the decade, surely--have not been diminished or neglected in her pursuit of an expanded, sometimes experimental sound. These ten new songs, some of her best yet, brim with heart and wisdom.

My Love Is Cool is volatile, but it’s also invigorating, charming, and hugely exciting for what it promises.

A perfect pop soundtrack for the summer search for perfect love.

Two and a half hours is a hefty commitment, but if you take the time, you’ll have fun with this one.

Blank Project never aims for luxuriance. Neneh Cherry instead undertakes-- and nails--a riskier feat: a reflection on midlife that sounds both wise and inventive.

4:44 is just about the safest way Jay-Z could have re-asserted his dominance: smarter raps over soulful beats over a very concise runtime.

The band may love the sounds of Built to Spill and Superchunk a little too much, but they’re also far too adventurous to settle for apery, least of all on LOSE. It’s their best work yet.

Camera Obscura are old enough to know what they’re are capable of, and they do it passionately and with a practiced hand.

Lady Gaga’s utter lack of self-restraint sets ARTPOP apart from her earlier work (ruminate on that for a moment).

Doris displays some of those growing pains, but it also delivers a uniquely impressive collection of vicious beats and lyrics that make Magna Carta...Holy Grail sound like Marky Mark.

The record boasts snappy hooks, passive-aggressive bon mots, and plenty of noise, proving that Tweedy has no intention of calming down anytime soon.

Offerings of pure pop pleasure are offset with healthy doses of weirdness. It’s a sincere, exciting and excitable album that successfully adds by subtracting.

The most critical takeaway is how nuanced every single track is on behalf of Kaytranada’s unparalleled attention to and manipulation of detail.

Depth is a tough thing to accomplish. It can’t merely be present, it also has to be convincing that it’s there and worthwhile. Have You in My Wilderness’ best quality is that it won’t let you down if you get up close and sit with it for a while.

Bundick’s inspirations run rampant across the back half of Michael.

While B’lieve won’t always command attention, that’s part of what makes it such a pleasant experience--Vile freely expresses himself without demanding anything in return.

This is a vibrant, uneven, irresistibly likable, and occasionally transcendent release from an artist who shows no signs of falling off anytime soon.

It’s Crampton channeling her own history into 25 bracing, punk minutes of post-everything, out-there, futurist electronic madness. Drexciya would be proud.

Short Movie is an introspective journey crafted into a communal experience. It’s the product of a genuine artist losing faith in herself, hitting the reset button, and returning with an intensely personal work that manages to say something about us all.

He’s stripped his simultaneously fascinating and off-putting style down considerably without diluting its effect, jettisoning the loopy abstractions and lurid detail of Doris in favor of a commanding iciness.

Expanding their lineup with a second drummer, Thee Oh Sees are allowed to stretch their sound and release one of their most cosmic, trippiest records yet.

It really only hopes to make you smile with smart twin harmonies and silly lyrics. On those terms, Leave Me Alone is a unqualified success.

This onslaught of concepts and sonic rushes drives Redemption right along, carrying the listener through Richard’s vast and captivating imagination. Though she tends to repeat the styles of her earlier works, Richard still sounds like nobody else in the game, and for that Redemption stands apart.

Psychic’s gloriously protracted exhales leave you no choice but to slow down and move at its pace.

ingles is sometimes stark, and sometimes surprising – but its key constant is that it’s rarely short of spellbinding.

Ritual Spirit, apart from the rapping portions (which don’t detract from the experience), pores over a genre Massive Attack helped shape.

While this sort of economic chords and vocal/guitar/bass/drum hardcore punk rock record is easy to come by, what’s rarer is when its aggression--not necessarily just in the vocals and lyrics--comes from someplace genuine.

Mine a little deeper, and all of a sudden, Another One is the most technically refined album DeMarco has produced.

Making music this fuzzy and wonderful is a notable feat. Making tunes that make you want to jump into a time-travelling DeLorean and materialise in yester-year, desperate to reenact the same wanton mistakes that you made the first time round? That’s a real achievement.

On No Burden, Dacus follows up the stellar opening track with a wonderful debut album full of bigger, bolder slow-burn anthems and subtle epics.

Even if Colour doesn’t drastically alter Blake’s sound, it widens and refines it, keeping what made his first two records so memorable while hinting that there remains ever further room for growth.

As the trio continue to remould and refine their craft, Mess, an album fuelled by impulse, demonstrates their ideological core hasn’t moved an inch.

All told, Oneohtrix Point Never’s latest album is good, but it’s also his worst ‘proper’ album since his critical breakthrough. In attempting (but not fully committing to) his most accessible release, Age Of doesn’t feel like it’ll go down well with any particular audience.

It might be his best work to date. Just about everything here is good.

With II, UMO remains humble in composition and production, creating an honest album that comforts in the strangest ways.

Not dance music in any traditional sense of the world, Faith In Strangers has injected itself into a crowded conversation on originality alone.

There are no wasted notes, no wasted time, and nothing but the impulse to listen again.

While the album is beautiful both sonically and lyrically, in some of the tracks, Batmanglij falls into his older artistic patterns that feel played out. However, if you weren’t aware that he was in Vampire Weekend, this might not be as obvious.

Cheetah is still his best release since his return to the music scene. If you’re looking for something groundbreaking, you’re probably going to be disappointed, but this is still one of 2016’s best electronic releases, and a worthy addition to the Aphex Twin canon.

Smartly abandoning the sappy balladry that alienated many on his debut album, Pluto, and trimming all the excess fat that made Honest, an otherwise solid sophomore effort, feel largely uneven, Future goes for the gut and DS2 can pack a wallop.

This album is powerful, occasionally transcendent, always honest and never less than entertaining.

As an album set out to reappropriate pop rock, MCII succeeds.

It grows beyond its deeply emotional roots, to become whatever you want it to be.

This is neither a reboot nor an overhaul of their signature sound. If anything, it affirms all the things the duo does best and then shows they can do much more.

Muppets In Space album cover aside, Gonzalez has still left plenty on Junk for his merry usual band of misfits--the lovers, the dreamers, and him.

It does not need your analysis. It only wants to be listened to in order to convince you, with its sweeping aural dreamscapes, that Postiljonen can hold their own among the heavyweights.

Ajikawo knows she’s on her way to something new, and she enjoins us to follow her instead of white rabbits. She already knows where they’re going, and it’s not nearly as interesting as where she’s headed.

Under the wing of producer Kevin McMahon, the duo was able to flesh out arrangements and let their music mature.

RTJ2 isn’t quite the game-changer The Money Store was, but it makes no attempt to hide its desire to knock its progenitors out cold and scamper off with the crown.

More than ever, Willner’s own soul is put on display through his repurposing of sound, and what results is both synthetic and organic, both detailed and blurry, further cementing The Field’s reputation in the electronic ether.

It is this cycle of futility and human effort that makes Hummingbird so compelling, and so much more rewarding the second time around

Overall, Mellow Waves sits nicely in Cornelius’ discography. Not as scene as Fantasma or exploratory as Point. This record uses the studio magic in a more utilitarian way.

With We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic, Foxygen is a breath of fresh air, reviving a vintage style of songwriting in a new and creative fashion.

More often than not, however, this album brings you into its world and convinces you that love really is redemptive, that it can hold back the hounds at the gate.

Yes Lawd! cuts a deep groove and doesn’t let up for nearly an hour of R&B/hip-hop bliss.

Folks will either freak out over this album or abhor its very existence, and that is exactly what makes it so good.

New View isn’t the crowning jewel in Friedberger’s catalogue, but it is a beautiful, unadorned meditation on life’s most delicate mysteries: potential, narrative, and the passage of time.

A heavy-hitting, beautifully arranged EP that might or might not have been recorded between 2006 and 2008.

This is a darker, more direct take from a band that sees in pop music a place to distill their ideas.

The result is a record that stands at the crossroads between assurance and insecurity. In the hands of lesser artists, this dichotomy would be an obstacle to surmount, but for Ørsted the disparate strands of her identity combine like a binary chemical cocktail and ignite into something dangerously and delicately sublime.

A personal triumph that continues her revamping of what pop means today. Its contents show a trajectory from acts like Art of Noise into ‘90s pop and Eurodance to today’s droning and experimental music by acts such as Lotic.

FIDLAR will make you want to pound a case of the cheapest beer you can find with these guys, it’ll make you want to crank it up as loud as it will go in whichever of your friends’ cars.

As an entity, Obsidian is neither more nor less accessible than Cerulean. Ultimately, your mood as a listener--and perhaps the weather--will dictate how often you’ll return to Obsidian‘s bleak and beautiful world.

Feist is sounding her most directional in a decade.

Too True proves that Dum Dum Girls are as relevant today as they were six years ago because they know that evolution is the key to survival. This is their sound, the sound of today, and they wear it well.

Ultimately Cold Spring Fault Less Youth is a fascinating record, a series of varied and elaborate soundscapes that find the right balance of mood and melody.

Present Tense may be a less accessible offering from Wild Beasts, but it’s their most human--a mesmeric bundle of contradictions, indignities and pleasures.

Here, the music feels more organic and in line with the songcraft that has formed the band’s backbone to date.

Flower Boy has elevated Tyler closer to the line. An unexpected move to be sure, but no less impressive whatsoever.